Pulling Strings
by Adorelo
Summary: You begin to piece together all of the jumbled, nonsequential nonsense that floats around your head, and make a direct path towards hope. Because that’s all you can ever aim for.


_A/N: This is a little odd, even for me. But I'd appreciate your opinions. _

_Thanks: To Irony882 for always being here at a moments notice, ready to exercise her red pen on my stunted prose._

The motions. Sit. Type. Feel.

Motion one: sit.

Grab a comfortable chair; you know you'll be here for a while, you always are. It's strange how typing letters onto a computer screen can make you feel so much better. It's less personal that a pen and paper; that can be identified as yours. Computers, they're all ones and zeros when you break it down.

You settle yourself on the seat, leaning back for a moment, contemplating your words. Who to address it to? Well, no one reads it; it doesn't really need a target. Plant your feet, cross your legs; settle yourself in for the long haul of opening up Calleigh Duquesne. If you didn't do this, you'd break down. Everyone needs an outlet.

This is yours. 

With pen and paper, it's permanent. Obviously not; you can throw it away. But it feels it at the time. On a screen, that back button is always there, winking at you, a safety net.

Fingers poised, you begin.

Motion two: type.

_Screen name: Cduquesne  
Password: bulletgirl  
Blog entry 261107_

This is the hard part. Settling down and deciding where to start. You mind says the beginning, but you're not too sure that's far enough back. And can you actually pinpoint the beginning? They beginning of what? You get confused.

Regardless, you must begin.

_It's been so long since I've written here; I almost can't remember how to write. It's strange how far I've come since my last update. Things have changed. Work gets harder every day, friends have come and gone, and family? Well, family is just as dysfunctional as it ever was._

I received a call from my mom the other day, asking me if I would be down for Christmas. I said no. My family doesn't have the best track record for Christmases and I wish she'd understand that. But my mother lives in a little bubble of self-righteousness, a glass wall around herself that even I, her daughter, can't penetrate. It'll always be that way, my mother, sat _high upon a shelf I'll never be able to reach. A shelf that will remain forever a mystery to me, unable to see what lies beyond the line of dust I can just make out._

_But that__'__s the thing with my mother. She__'ll__ hide up there and pretend everything is okay because, of course, appearances are everything. __"__What will the neighbours say__"__ is the most important thing she thinks of. It didn__'__t matter what it was, she had to think what others would think. Acceptance is her addiction.__  
_  
_She asked me what I was going to do. My response? Stay with a friend. The truth? Probably work. People never question, they're just glad they don't have to do it._

It shocked me to think it's almost that time of year again. The time when my Uncle Martin will be taking advantage of the holiday festivities; standing, blind drunk on my mother's coffee table with a lamp shade on his head as a hat, singing 'I want to break free' out of tune whilst using my poor grandmother's slipper as a microphone. Oh, the fun times.

They never last.   
_  
It wouldn't be long before too much alcohol is consumed and the fighting starts. It's a cycle I'm used to; with my family nothing stays happy for long. Except me, of course. I have to._

Ironic really, all the times I have tried to 'break free' of their ties, but no matter how hard I try, I can't abandon my family. Because that's what they are at the end of the day. They raised me, albeit not conventionally, for 18 years; I owe them something.

So I carry on, fighting every day to try to hold them together, grasping the strings tight in my fists and pulling with all my might. The only one working, gradating towards insanity as I try to keep control of the kite. But once the wind takes hold…

I wish they held my heart that tightly.

Until next time.

--CD

Motion three: Feel.

And that's the point of it all. You begin to piece together all of the jumbled, non-sequential nonsense that floats around your head, and make a direct path towards hope. Because that's all you can ever aim for.

It's times like this you wish you had strings, controls attached to your arms and legs that could do the work for you. A puppet master, calling the shots, making your decisions, pulling you this way and that. Making you do things because you don't want to hope anymore, you don't want to rely on a feeling to get you by. Feelings are irrational, they cannot be quantified or studied, they don't fit. Hope doesn't fit. But hope is all you have.

You hope your work will be okay. You hope your family will save itself from the pit of despair. You hope your life will return to some semblance of normality, only to realize moments later, that you never had it in the first place.

Your life; what is it? Your friends? Your family? Your work? That is your life. Friends and family flit in and out when it suits them best, but work has been the one main constant. You find that sad. The fact that your family don't care enough to visit, and when they do it's only your father you see, hurts you more that you'd admit. Because you can't see that pain behind your smile. That pain isn't there, won't be there as you hope it disappears. Appearances hide things. The rest of your family don't cause you pain anymore; they remain detached, a quality you seem to have picked up.

One you hope to lose. And how do you win a fight? By confronting or walking away. You've tried the latter, so onwards and upwards.

Pitching down one final peg in your battle of hope, you grab the phone, determined that you won't back away again. You have one family, one chance to make it work. You'll do your part even if they don't do theirs. Pressing down on the scratchy buttons, you allow your heart to flutter as hope again rises, and it always will. It's a tricky feeling; it sticks around and hides deep down, grasping on strings just like you do, holding on when there's nothing there to hold on to.

You hear a click, and a quiet greeting.

"Mom? It's me…" 


End file.
